Posts Tagged ‘Complete Genomics Analysis Platform’

Initial DNA analysis of one of the 3,000-year-old elongated skulls found in Paracas, Peru, has revealed that they may not have been come from humans but from a completely new species, according to Paracas Museum assistant director Brien Foerster.

Foerster, who also runs his own tour group company in Peru and has authored 11 books on ancient history, told Ancient Origins that a geneticist who tested skull samples has found that they contain mutated DNA that does not match any known genetic DNA information in GenBank, an open-access sequence database of all the known genetic data in the world.

The unidentified geneticist told Foerster: “It had mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) with mutations unknown in any human, primate, or animal known so far. But a few fragments I was able to sequence from this sample indicate that if these mutations will hold we are dealing with a new human-like creature, very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans.”

“I am not sure it will even fit into the known evolutionary tree,” the geneticist added.

Geneticist won’t come forward, for now

According to Foerster, the geneticist in question, who apparently does contract work for the US government, is willing to go public, but does not want to come forward until the tests prove the theory conclusively.

Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello discovered the skulls in 1928 in a massive graveyard in Paracas, desert peninsula in the Pisco Province on the south coast of Peru. Over 300 skulls were discovered and are some of the largest elongated skulls to have been found in the world.

Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But human intelligence is suffering for other reasons as well.

According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted.

Bigfoot is real. That’s according to a group of Colorado researchers who say they have hard evidence proving its existence.

Researcher Dave Paulides is convinced the reality of Bigfoot isn’t as fuzzy as the photos from people who claim to have seen the mythological creature.

“This DNA is like nothing else in the world,” Paulides said.

Paulides says Bigfoot looks approximately 7 to 8 feet tall and weighs in at a whopping 800 to 1,000 pounds.

“It’s easy to say a lot of things are crazy. If you lived underground your whole life, the belief that 400 people could fly in a plane would sound crazy,” Paulides said.

Paulides says his research group has collected hundreds of samples of DNA evidence. He focused his search in Northern California’s redwoods. He says strands of hair are from a Sasquatch, genetically tested to reveal a previously unknown species.

“This isn’t an animal. This is a subspecies of a human, and we believe they travel in groups,” Paulides said.

Not a single research institution in the country has confirmed the DNA test results, but Paulides says there are thousands of sightings a year, from California to Tennessee, including dozens in Colorado.

“Colorado Parks and Wildlife does not currently list ‘Sasquatch,’ ‘Yeti,’ ‘Bigfoot,’ ‘The Abominable Snowman,’ or ‘Harry’ (of ‘Harry and the Hendersons’) as any of the more than 900 diverse species that are native to Colorado,” the organization said in a statement.

“I think that the government probably is aware of the subject, but it’s difficult to give acknowledgement to something that they obviously can’t control,” Paulides said.

Paulides says he’s surprised more people haven’t seen Bigfoot. He believes there could be as many as 50,000 in the wilderness.

The Supreme Court will hear a privacy rights challenge to the police practice of taking DNA from people arrested but not yet convicted.

WASHINGTON — On a cold February night three years ago, police in suburban Arlington, Va., received a frantic call. A young woman said her roommate had been abducted at gunpoint by a short, clean-shaven man who sped away in a silver SUV.

At dawn, a motorist spotted the victim in a snowy field near a highway, raped and strangled, but alive. An alert officer, hearing the lookout report, recalled that he’d jotted down the license tag of a silver Dodge Durango whose driver lurked near bars at midnight, leading to the quick arrest of a short, clean-shaven Marine named Jorge Torrez.

Ten years ago, Virginia became the first state to require, upon arrest for a serious crime, a mouth swab for DNA. The sample from Torrez, sent to a state crime lab and entered into the FBI‘s DNA database, confirmed he was the rapist. A few weeks later a DNA match also led to charges against him in the rape and murder of two girls, ages 8 and 9, in Zion, Ill., where Torrez had gone to high school. Jerry Hobbs, the father of one of the girls, had been in prison for the crimes.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a privacy rights challenge to taking DNA from people who are arrested. The case could either end the practice or make it the norm nationwide.

Cancer will become a manageable disease rather than a death sentence thanks to a revolutionary treatment which will be available within five years, British specialists predict.

All patients will soon have their tumour’s DNA, its genetic code, sequenced, enabling doctors to ensure they give exactly the right drugs to keep the disease at bay.

Doctors hope it will be an important step towards transforming some types of cancer into a chronic rather than fatal disease.

The technique could enable terminally ill patients, who can currently expect to live only months, to carry on for a decade or more in relatively good health, according to specialists at the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

“We should be aspiring to cure cancer, but for people with advanced disease, it will be a question of managing them better so they survive for much longer – for many years,” said Prof Alan Ashworth, chief executive of the institute.

“Cancer often appears in people who are old, and if we can keep them alive long enough for them to die of something else, then we are turning cancer into a chronic disease.”

Prof Ashworth said that understanding of how different cancers were caused by different genetic triggers was building “incredibly rapidly”.

Genetic profiling of tumours is already used to some extent, but current methods only look for a few genes. Women with advanced breast cancer are tested to see if their tumours have a particular variant of the HER2 gene, which causes a fifth of cases. Those with it are given Herceptin, but the same drug would do no good for those without the gene variant.

Advanced melanoma patients with a particular gene mutation are prescribed Vemurafenib, a pill that has been shown to increase survival, on average, from 9.6 to 13.2 months, and help patients feel much more energetic.

A genetic researcher is saying that Bigfoot DNA assessments establish that the furry creature actually does exist. Dr. Melba S. Ketchum states she and her staff sequenced about three complete Sasquatch nuclear genomes and concluded the species is a human hybrid — a mosaic of human and novel non-human aspects. Their conclusions have still to go peer evaluation.

A Texas veterinarian says she and fellow genetic scientists have verified the existence of “Bigfoot,”even however their findings have even so to pass peer overview.

Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, founder of DNA Diagnostics Inc. in the eastern Texas town of Timpson, said she and her crew expended 5 several years on their research of purported Bigfoot hair and determined they have validated the existence of a hominin hybrid Pertinent Answers/Firms species, the famous creature frequently acknowledged as “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch,” residing in North The usa.

There have been recurrent-but-unsubstantiated claims of Bigfoot sightings additional than the a long time, which include some grainy film clips.

In a release posted on the company’s Web internet site Saturday, the scientists say their DNA sequencing suggests the animal is a human relative that created about 15,000 several years back as a hybrid cross of present day Homo sapiens with an not known primate species.

Ketchum mentioned her team has sequenced three whole Sasquatch nuclear genomes and concluded the species is a human hybrid.

“Our examine has sequenced 20 comprehensive mitochondrial genomes and utilized up coming generation sequencing to obtain a few whole nuclear genomes from purported Sasquatch samples,” she claimed in the release. “The genome sequencing shows that Sasquatch mtDNA is identical to present day working day Homo sapiens, but Sasquatch nuDNA is a novel, mysterious hominin suitable to Homo sapiens and other primate species.

“Our facts Associated Items/Firms point out that the North American Sasquatch is a hybrid species, the final result of males of an unknown hominin species crossing with female Homo sapiens.”

Genetic testing has by now dominated out Homo neanderthalis and the Denisova hominin as contributors to Sasquatch mtDNA or nuDNA, she talked about.

“The male progenitor that contributed the not known sequence to this hybrid is special as its DNA is additional distantly removed from humans than other these days identified hominins like the Denisovan particular person,” Ketchum said.

“Sasquatch nuclear DNA is extremely novel and not at all what we experienced anticipated. Even although it has human nuclear DNA inside its genome, there are also distinctly non-human, non-archaic hominin, and non-ape sequences. We identify it as a mosaic of human and novel non-human sequence.”

She mentioned even far more take a look at is vital to “outstanding characterize and have an understanding of Sasquatch nuclear DNA.”

Ketchum, who describes herself as a veterinarian with 27 numerous a long time realistic experience in genetics investigation, which include forensics, needs general public officers and law enforcement to realize the Sasquatch as an indigenous folks today.

“Genetically, the Sasquatch are a human hybrid with unambiguously modern-day-day human maternal ancestry,” she mentioned. “Government at all quantities have to understand them as an indigenous men and women today and right absent guard their human and constitutional rights in the direction of men and women who would see in their bodily and cultural distinctions a ‘license’ to hunt, entice or get rid of them.”

Folks residing outside the house Africa discuss as significantly as several for each cent of their DNA with Neanderthals, a cave-dwelling species with muscular small arms and legs and a mind marginally larger than ours.

The Cambridge scientists examined demographic styles suggesting that human beings were far from intimate with the species they displaced in Europe nearly forty,000 many years in the past.

The research into the genomes of the two species, located a frequent ancestor five hundred,000 many years in the past would be adequate to account for the shared DNA.

Their assessment, revealed in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), contradicts latest reports that discovered inter-species mating, identified as hybridisation, almost certainly transpired.

Dr Andrea Manica, who led the review, said: “To me the interbreeding question is not whether there was hybridisation but whether there was any hybridisation that afflicted the subsequent evolution of individuals. I assume this is really, quite not likely.

“Our work shows clearly the patterns presently witnessed in the Neanderthal genome are not outstanding, and are in line with our expectations of what we would see with no hybridisation.

“So, if any hybridisation happened then it would have been minimum and considerably less than what individuals are proclaiming now.”

Data has shown that Neanderthals ended up pushed into extinction by humans who have been a lot more efficient at obtaining food and multiplied at a more quickly fee.

A prior review in 2010 suggested that interspecies liaisons near the Middle East resulted in Neanderthal genes initial moving into humans 70,000 a long time in the past.

Contemporary non-Africans reveal more with Neanderthals than Africans, supporting the claim that the mixing happened when the initial earlier humans remaining Africa to populate Europe and Asia.

The existence of a five hundred,000-12 months-old shared ancestor that predates the source of Neanderthals gives a greater rationalization for the genetic mix.

Variety inside this ancestral species intended that northern Africans have been far more genetically similar to their European counterparts than southern Africans through geographic proximity.

This likeness persisted above time to account for the overlap with the Neanderthal genome we see in modern people these days.

Variations in between populations can be described by prevalent ancestry, Dr Manica said.

“The notion is that our African ancestors would not have been a homogeneous, effectively-mixed populace but manufactured of a number of populations in Africa with some degree of differentiation, in the way proper now you can explain to a northern and southern European from their appears,” she mentioned.

âBased on common ancestry and geographic differences amid populations inside of every single continent, we would forecast out of Africa populations to be far more comparable to Neanderthals than their African counterparts â just the patterns that ended up observed when the Neanderthal genome was sequenced, but this routine was attributed to hybridisation.

“Ideally, every person will turn out to be far more careful just before invoking hybridisation, and start off having into account that historic populations differed from every other almost certainly as significantly as present day populations do.â

Northern Africans would be far more comparable to Europeans and ancient similarity stayed due to the fact there wasn’t ample mixing among northern and southern Africans.

Populace diversity, known as substructure, cant make clear info on the shared genes, mentioned David Reich, a professor of genetics at Harvard Health-related College, in Boston who authored the 2010 examine.

We have ruled out the chance that historical substructure can make clear all the proof of higher relatedness of Neanderthals to non-Africans than to Africans, he extra.

Dr Manica stated hybridisation among Neanderthals and people can never ever be disproved completely.

DNA tests on hair found supposedly found in a Siberian may actually prove the existence of the Abominable Snowman.

Three separate DNA tests of the hair reported it “came from a human-like creature which is not a Homosapien yet is more closely related to man than a monkey”.

Yeti hunters claim Yeti DNA is less than one per cent different to that of a human. But no-one has confirmed that “fact” to date, because no Yeti has ever been found or tested for DNA.

Until now. The DNA tests were carried out at universities in Moscow, St Petersburg at Idaho in the US. It is understood a fourth DNA test is also being carried out in the UK.

What do you think? Is it real? Or just a huge hoax? Tell us below.

“We had ten samples of hair to study, and have concluded that they belong to mammal, but not a human, and not the animals known to the area where they were found, like a bear, or wolf, or goat, or any other animal,” Professor Valentin Sapunov of the Russian State Hydrometeorological Institute said.

“It was a branch of our university in St Petersburg that carried out a DNA test, and the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences. The tests were performed by laboratory of electronic microscopy and laboratory of molecular genealogical classification.”

The “Yeti hair” was allegedly found in Siberia’s Azasskaya Cave by Dr Igor Birtsev, Russia’s leading advocate of the existence of the abominable snowman.

But is it all an elaborate hoax? That’s the suggestion the Siberian Times is making this morning after Dr Birtsev strangely played down the findings.

“I doubt that they have indeed managed to carry out a DNA test on Azasskaya Cave hair, and doubt that they found how close the Yeti is to humans by its DNA,” he was quoted as saying.

“It has not been done anywhere in the world. I take it that they’ve worked with electronic microscopes, but have they compared it to other samples? I am not sure. So I am rather sceptical about Valentin Sapunov’s conclusions.”

Could it maybe have something to do with the fact that a major bookmaker is offering 100-1 odds on the existence of a yeti being proven by the end of 2012?

A Paddy Power spokesperson said: “It’s true, at odds of 100/1 we do risk putting a Bigfoot in our mouth if these recent sightings turn out to be genuine.”

And then there’s the fact that the “evidence” just happened to be released on Halloween. Real or not real? You tell us.

Here is the definition taken from the Human Genome Project, “A genome is the complete collection of an organism’s genetic material. The human genome is composed of about 20,000 to 25,000 genes located on the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a human cell.

A single human chromosome may contain more than 250 million DNA base pairs, and scientists estimate that the entire human genome consists of about 3 billion base pairs.

Genetic science is moving so fast that people now in their 60′s-80′s will see medical innovations that will touch their lives.

Francis Collins, MD, a leader in the Project, was astounded to see the huge amount of information derived from the genome, particularly in regards to older people.

As an example he cited age-related Macular degeneration, an eye disease troubling almost 2 million, visually impaired Americans. “Using new genomic tools we’ve discovered two genes that account for about 60% of the risk- the rest is smoking. But we were surprised. These genes are involved in inflammation, and everybody was thinking macular degeneration was caused by aging in the back of the eye.”

Macular degeneration tests are now being made using anti-inflammatory drugs, a complete change in the way it was formerly viewed.

Many scientists believe that the Human Genome Project has the potential to revolutionize both therapeutic and preventive medicine by providing insights into the basic biochemical processes that underlie many human diseases.

It was once thought that the human genome would never be completely mapped out because it was much too complex. The human genome project found that, while complex, human genomes are not as complex as some very undistinguished creatures such as the roundworm and fruit fly.

Nevertheless the breakthrough was enormous and caused an incredible stir among scientists and researchers worldwide, opening doors to research about humans that had never before been seen.

At the center of the breakthrough was Complete Genomics, a California research facility that caused the stir when it announced in 2009 that it had sequenced its first human genome. When they had finished it they submitted the data to the National Center for Biotechnology Information and scientists the world over clamored to see it.

Today Complete Genomics is a full-service life-sciences company. The DNA sequencing platform that they developed is used by researchers around the globe to analyze and sequence human genomes using their proprietary and data management software and their informatics.

When a researcher anywhere in the world needs a genome to be sequenced they send it to Complete Genomics for analysis in Mountain View, California. After sequencing the assembled sequences and variant reports are published and sent back to the various researchers who order them.

The proprietary software that Complete Genomics uses is adjusted for the study of human DNA exclusively, and they can provide researchers with genome variation files and also assembled sequences.

Today there are various research papers that have been submitted using the results found at Complete Genomics. For example, their research was responsible for finding which gene was responsible for Miller Syndrome, a rare craniofacial disorder that had struck 1 member of a family of four.

It’s an amazing time to be alive, to be sure, and Complete Genomics is at the forefront of amazing changes that will soon be taking place that only years ago were hard to even imagine. Their technology will ultimately allow researchers to help find and, possibly, cure many diseases that afflict mankind.